Portrait by Jeremy Seth Taylor
Allyson Mellberg
Issue #23
The multimedia artist brings childhood imagination up to date
By Chantal Gordon
Published: March 5th, 2005 | 2:47pm
Killer corsets, hot iron shoes, and self-mutilating wicked stepsisters — the fairytales that inspired artist Allyson Mellberg as a child aren’t your typical Disney fare.
“I read a lot of the Brothers Grimm growing up. I love the spookiness and strangeness of the environments that Grimms’ characters inhabit,” the Charlottesville, Virginia, artist said. “I think the biggest shock for people is how violent the original Cinderella is — for example, the wicked stepsisters cutting off their toes and heels to make the slipper fit. I grew up a very superstitious child, and those stories were totally fuel for my imagination.”
The otherworldly perceptiveness of children is a theme that pervades much of Mellberg’s work. Her portraits portray beautiful, contemplative girls and boys amid swirling, formless spirits. In her paintings, collograph prints, and soft sculptures, potent emotions are elegantly restrained, and the images Mellberg creates are often both eerie and sweet.
It’s this kind of haunted beauty that has made Mellberg the go-to woman for book, zine, and music project illustrations. She drew the album cover and promotional materials for Rainer Maria’s 2003 LP Long Knives Drawn and has illustrated for 10 zines to date. “[Zines are] like a really great version of a business card — it’s communicating with people on a really basic level,” Mellberg said. “I like the idea of art being really accessible. Zines are a really easy way to give art. I draw my ideas in them — it’s like writing a haiku.”
In one of her most recent projects, The Shampoo Girls, Mellberg channels a newfound artistic influence: current events. The piece is a bittersweet confection depicting adorable kids with frothy facial growths. “I saw on the news that the chemicals in women’s products — shampoos, lotions — can cause cancerous growths,” said Mellberg, who makes her own nontoxic paints and inks from walnuts and oak. “So in The Shampoo Girls, everyone had foamy deformities. I gave them names like Hexyl, Sorbitan, and Ester of PVM — they were pulled out of chemical names, but they sounded Shakespearean.”
Mellberg also is illustrating two books of poems by Marshall Weber: The Emotional Tourist and Twilight in the Adolescent Empire, due out this spring. “I’m taking lines [of Weber’s poems] and thinking, ‘What’s an image that goes with this line?’ and then I make weird little sketches,” Mellberg said. “You try to distill what you can from what they give you.” Her collaboration with Weber came about thanks to the Booklyn Artists Alliance, a Brooklyn-based collective devoted to promoting artists’ books.
“I seek out doing collaborations,” Mellberg said. In addition to her others, Mellberg has an ongoing professional partnership with her husband, artist Jeremy Seth Taylor, with whom she’s worked on zines, crafts, and art installations. “It’s totally getting into someone’s head — and it’s fun to have someone influence you. Collaborating isn’t so hard once you find the right person to collaborate with.”
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